A newly surfaced email reveals just how important the mobile gaming market is to Microsoft’s gaming ambitions.
Xbox Head Phil Spencer once admitted that one of the only ways the company could succeed in mobile gaming would be to shut down its console division and start a mobile company inside Microsoft. A record of this unconventional proposal was one of many bombshells from Microsoft’s ongoing legal battle with the FTC over its Activision Blizzard acquisition.
While the public discourse surrounding the case has so far been largely focused on the possibility of Call of Duty becoming an Xbox exclusive, Microsoft’s attorneys repeatedly argued that the $68.7 billion deal is primarily mobile-motivated. The confidential documents unsealed during the five-day hearing in front of a San Francisco federal court in June mostly substantiated those claims, not least because they revealed that Microsoft even tried buying one of the largest mobile developers on the planet immediately before setting its sights on Activision Blizzard in early 2022.
